By Juliana A. Torres
Staff Writer

Construction on the fourth power generator at Cane Island Power Park, near Intercession City, is well under way, with many of the bigger pieces of the new structure already in place.

“The gas turbine is going to fire for the first time on Feb. 16, 2011,” Jay Butters, the power park’s manager, said.

Zachry Construction Corp., the company hired as construction manager for the project, by contract must have the new unit selling power by July 15, 2011, but Butters said he thinks the company will beat that deadline.

“They’re doing a good job, and they’re way ahead of schedule,” he said.

During a recent tour of the facility, Butters marveled at the giant but still-quiet machinery being installed.

“You can almost see the curvature on it, it’s just so big,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

The Florida Municipal Power Association and Kissimmee Utility Authority, Cane Island co-owners, started on plans to add the fourth unit, a natural gas-fueled generator with a capacity of 300 megawatts, in 2006. At that time, the need for more power to meet an ever-increasing demand in Central Florida was urgent.

Today, the need is less urgent, Butters said. Even after the economy collapsed, the several-year process of building the new unit had already started. But to say the unit won’t be needed isn’t accurate, Butters said.

“If it was done today, it’d be running right now, because it’d be the cheapest unit we got,” Butters said. “It’ll displace more expensive megawatts, like (the ones produced by) Unit 2 and the Hansel Plant (in Kissimmee). They’ll run less and this will run more.”

Once the unit is operational, the association will be ahead of the game.

“We’re going to be in a huge advantage in the marketplace. We’re going to have a little extra,” Butters said, explaining that the association will be able to sell the energy to other entities that might suddenly have a need when the economy picks up.

The new unit, which uses reheated steam as well as natural gas to create even more power, will be slightly more efficient than the second-newest generator, Unit 3, Butters said. It will have the capacity to create more on-demand power, have more cooling capacity to make up for that increase and include a new emergency generator that would allow Cane Island to recover quicker in an emergency.

An increased

workload

Unfortunately, when the new unit goes operational, KUA – the primary operator of the new generator, despite the fact that the association owns it – won’t have any more money budgeted to hire more workers. That gap makes current employees more apprehensive about the increased workload, rather than excited for the expansion, Butters said. Still, he said he remains optimistic that they’ll be able to handle it and that the difference will be good in the long run.

“It helps us because all of a sudden our power plant is very cheap for the amount of power we’re putting out. We’re going to be one of the cheapest around,” Butters said, adding that the new unit won’t require any new training of employees. “This is the same technology; it’s not a surprise to any of my guys. I don’t think it’ll be a problem at all.”

He posed the question to Cane Island’s Maintenance Supervisor, Scott Yelvington: “How are you going to maintain a whole ‘nother unit, bigger than any unit you got, with the same or less people?”

Yelvington answered first that magic might be employed in the accomplishment, but then ceded that the recession also means less megawatts are needed to run fewer businesses, freeing up some of the less efficient units KUA uses.

“We’re thinking, if (a unit) runs less, it should require a little less maintenance, so we might be able to stay ahead of the game,” he said. “We’ll see what happens when it gets there.”

Another help will be a new control room that will be built by KUA employees and running by the time Unit 4 goes operational. One worker will be able to watch all four units at once, instead of workers in two separate rooms overseeing the three current units, Butters said.

“You can be upstairs in the control room, and I tell you to start Unit 4, you’re going to be able to do it without leaving your seat out there,” he explained, pointing out the various automated valves built into the new unit. “There’s nothing over here you have to do by hand.”

The construction process

The recession also helped another aspect of the new unit. Since Unit 4 is one of the few construction projects in the county – and one of fewer power plants under construction in the whole state – Zachry has had its pick of employees. The employment trailer set up for the project receives 3,500 to 5,000 applications a month.

“They’re not having any problems with any workers,” he said.

At the most, 360 construction employees will be working on Unit 4. The most complicated and employee-heavy tasks will come after the heavier pieces of the unit – the “flashier” part of the construction process – are all put in place, Butters said.

“Believe it or not, setting these beams is easy. Connecting all the wires, that’s the hard-and-slow-down part,” he said. “We’re going to get to a point where it looks just like this for months.”

Generally speaking, however, building a generator is complicated. The list of tasks to be done throughout the entire process is thousands of lines long, said Butters, who tracks Zachry’s progress and the various deadlines along the way.

“They hit more dates than they miss,” he said.